PIG OF A MESS
 
They call it the OPI.  The Office of Police Integrity. Methinks after what has been happening lately they could rename it the Office of Police Incompetence. Originally, they were going to call it the Police Integrity Group. Until somebody realised that the acronym would be PIG. Pig. Maybe that would have been appropriate because they have certainly made a pig of a mess of recent legal issues.

 Today perjury charges were dropped against former Victorian Assistant Police Commissioner Noel Ashby. Earlier similar charges were dropped against former Police Association Secretary  Paul Mullett.  Last year, Police Media chief Steve Linnell pleaded guilty to perjury charges arising from the same OPI hearings and was given a two-year suspended jail sentence.
 
Now it’s a mess. Linnell was guilty. He admitted lying under oath. Whether Ashby and Mullett were innocent we will never know. They hearings they allegedly lied to were themselves illegally constituted. Mr. Ashby was facing 11 charges of perjury.
 
His lawyers argued that former Federal Court judge Murray Wilcox, QC, who conducted the hearings, was not a ‘relevant person’ under the Police Regulation Act, and any evidence arising from the OPI hearings was therefore invalid and could not be used against Mr. Ashby.

The legislation requires that before being appointed, an OPI delegate be sworn in as a ‘relevant person’. They got it back to front. He was appointed one day and sworn in the next.

As I said to the Attorney-General, Rob Hulls, in my studio on Friday: ‘Surely you’ve got enough expensive Government lawyers to get this right?’

And speaking of expense. The Herald Sun has been told Ashby and Mullett, have already sought legal advice about suing for compensation, and that Linnell is seeking legal advice about the possibility of an appeal against his perjury convictions.

Premier Bracks then Brumby  championed the OPI and used it as supposed proof that we don’t need a crime commission that every other major state has deemed necessary.

I believe OPI should be put out of its misery and a fully-fledged ICAC, a corruption watchdog, brought in not during, but before, the next election.
 
Tuesday, February 9, 2010

© Copyright Derryn Hinch 2010